{"id":437858,"date":"2026-08-20T01:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T01:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/437858\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T01:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T01:42:09","slug":"san-jose-sharks-renew-affiliation-with-echls-wichita-thunder-for-2026-27-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/437858\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks renew affiliation with ECHL&#8217;s Wichita Thunder for 2026-27"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Sharks on Wednesday announced that they have re-signed their affiliation agreement with the <a href=\"https:\/\/wichitathunder.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ECHL\u2019s Wichita Thunder<\/a> for the 2026-27 season. The Thunder have been the Sharks\u2019 ECHL affiliate since 2022.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are proud to extend our partnership with the Wichita Thunder,\u201d said Sharks assistant general manager Joe Will, who is also the GM of the AHL\u2019s Barracuda, in a statement. \u201cWichita is a first-class organization with an amazing staff, facilities and city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Thunder were previously affiliated with the Edmonton Oilers (2017-2022) and Ottawa Senators (2016-17). Per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockeydb.com\/nhl-attendance\/att_graph_season.php?lid=ECHL2004&amp;sid=2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">HockeyDB,<\/a> the Thunder averaged 4,398 fans per game last season at<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intrustbankarena.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Intrust Bank Arena,<\/a> which has a seating capacity of 13,450 for hockey.<\/p>\n<p>The Thunder had the 28th-best record in the 30-team ECHL last season, going 25-35-8-4.<\/p>\n<p>Joel T. Lomurno\u00a0is the team\u2019s general manager and Travis Clayton is beginning his first year as the team\u2019s head coach after two seasons as an assistant with Wichita.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are really happy to continue our partnership with the San Jose organization,\u201d Lomurno said in a statement. \u201cThe Sharks are on a path to having a tremendous season, and we look forward to helping develop their players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sharks on Wednesday announced that they have re-signed their affiliation agreement with the ECHL\u2019s Wichita Thunder for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[7,404,88,90,89,98,127],"class_list":["post-437858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-california","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}